WordPress is in a place where it is “good enough” and don’t have much incentive to become “great”

While still being very far from monopolizing the web, WordPress is a de-facto monopoly in independent web publishing, especially in sites that do not require a complicated editorial process – blogs, promotional sites, small shops and such. It is just so much better than any competition in the area in ease of installation, ease of use, documentation, free support forums, low paid support professionals, it just do not make much sense to use any other tool when you need anything that looks like a CMS on the web.

The problem with being in such a position is that you get sure that you got there from all the things you have done, and it is much harder to pinpoint problematic areas which needs more then incremental improvement, but an actual rethinking. We saw this happen to APPLE (think the original macintosh days, not the current appliances company), MicroSoft, IBM, SUN, each in turn reached a pinnacle of its market segment and just stopped innovating. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 is probably the best example of what happens, once it dominated the market and its bugs became a de-facto standard, MicroSoft dismantled the team working on it, and for years there had been no improvement in it as it was jus good enough. Most of us probably know how it ended, with time it became apperant that there is actually much more browsers can be used for than what MicroSoft assumed.

Is WordPress the equivalent of IE6 in the niche of web publishing? it is very hard to judge such things in real time, it is much easier in hindsight 😉 , but it does seem to me like innovation is on the decline, and if you read the tech sites you get a very negative drift against anyone admitting he uses WordPress.

So, what is my point? Hey this is clearly marked a s a “rant” and rants do not have to have a specific point